


if you don't have inherent womanly wiles, store-bought is fine

by kattyshack



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Mild Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 08:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10158167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/pseuds/kattyshack
Summary: In which Sansa can't find her chill and Jon is oblivious. Because, really, she can't have any ulterior motives when she offers him a backrub... Right?





	

The Stark estate is a madhouse on weekend mornings. They’re late to bed but early to rise, still riding on the high from the night before (with a little help from a few ibuprofen and several cups of coffee each). The kitchen is a mess of sugar cereals, sausage and bacon snapping on the stove, dogs begging for scraps, loud music, and Robb’s attempts at keeping time to the beat, using his cutlery and mug as a makeshift drumset.

Sansa is up first every morning to beat the rush. Not to mention, she makes the best pancakes, so she’s needed in the kitchen before her ravenous siblings if she wants to avoid a replay of the last time they were left alone with the oven. She’s not sure that Bran’s eyebrows would grow back a second time, and Arya would certainly be at risk of busting her gut from laughing that hard again. Dramatic, perhaps, but Sansa likes to get a jog in while the sun rises, anyway, and she prefers to come home to a smoke-free kitchen.

The midsummer heat is stifling, and Sansa is slick with sweat when she returns from her morning run. Her siblings have just trudged downstairs, groggy but nevertheless ready for the day. Bran passes her a cup of the Irish cream blend as soon as she steps through the sliding glass door.

“Good run?”

“Yeah, but I swear the heat index is triple digits already.” Sansa sips from her mug. She hadn’t bothered with a shirt, but she snaps the band of her sports bra in a feeble attempt to air out her skin.

“Try not to flash us, little sister,” Robb requests from his seat at the island. He points across the open floor plan to the sitting room. “We’ve got company. Last thing I need is for him to see you half-naked, or he’ll probably propose to you right here and now and I _know_ he hasn’t got a ring.”

Sansa rolls her eyes just as Jon grumbles from his spot on the couch, “Shut _up_ , Robb.”

“I’m practically half-naked now, anyway.” Sansa gestures down her body, clad only in a sports bra, shorts, and what she’s sure is a disproportionate amount of sweat. She lifts her chin in Jon’s direction. “Hear that, Snow? You going to propose now?”

Jon, whose face had been buried in a pillow, looks up with a quirked eyebrow. “Later. When I can move, which in immediate retrospect may be _never again, Robb_.”

“What did you do to him?” Sansa asks her brother, half concerned, half amused.

“Drunkenly tried to piggyback him last night,” Arya supplies as she dumps a sixth sugar packet into her coffee. She licks the excess from her fingers and continues. “Surprised you didn’t hear them stumbling into the house a few hours ago. Oafs.”

“Robb needs a babysitter when he drinks,” Jon adds, all but ignoring Arya’s insult. He pushes himself off the couch with a wince, but manages to make it to the kitchen. He touches Sansa’s elbow on his way to the coffeepot and sets her skin humming. “You’ve got my vote for the position, San.”

She’s tempted to accept it as long as he doesn’t put a shirt on. But before she can blurt that out and spoil her ill-made indifferent façade, Arya snorts and Robb mutters into his cereal, “‘Course she does.”

Jon’s not sure if Sansa ignores them or if she’s oblivious; either way, his face flames and he busies himself with the coffee to hide it.

“Something tells me that’s a two-man job, especially if you’ve got Theon in tow as well,” Sansa replies airily before changing the subject. “Anyone want pancakes? Rickon?”

Her youngest brother shakes his head. “Robb said we’d go to the soccer field. Me and him against Bran and Arya!”

“I thought you and Arya were the dream team?” Jon says, ruffling the boy’s curls.

“They bite,” Bran says matter-of-factly.

“It was _one time_!” Arya complains.

“They both bite,” Bran reiterates, “so they had to be separated.”

“Do you and Jon want to come?” Rickon asks over the bickering of his siblings. “We can play championships!”

“Jon can’t come, he’s an _invalid_ ,” Robb says, voice thick with sarcasm. “And Sansa looks right knackered. Woman gets up at the crack of dawn and nobody even wants pancakes. We’ve ruined her.”

Jon raises his eyebrows but keeps his gaze on his coffee as though he’s never seen anything quite so enchanting. Which, of course, isn’t true, his traitorous mind adds when Sansa laughs to his left. “I’ll have pancakes.”

“Hey.” Robb points a spoon, of all things, threateningly at his friend. “Keep away from my sister’s pancakes.”

Sansa makes an offended noise and flicks an unused sugar packet at his face. “Kindly do not refer to my body parts as breakfast foods, or I’ll tell Mum it was you who threw up in the umbrella stand at her last cocktail party.”  

“ _Et tu_ , Sansa?” Robb grins through his last mouthful of cereal. “Alright, I concede. You’ve got too much dirt on me. Jon can feel you up all he likes.”

“Jesus,” Jon mumbles while Sansa groans. He refills his coffee and shuffles back to the sitting room. “Excuse my forward attitude, Robb, but I’m about to kick you out of your own house if it means I don’t have to listen to your voice for the rest of the day.”

Robb laughs and begins to shepherd the others from the room. “Yeah, yeah, we’re out of here. C’mon, munchkins, to the park!”

Rickon’s objection that he’s “not a _munchkin_ ” is the last Sansa and Jon hear from the group before the door shuts behind them. The house is suddenly but blissfully quiet, save for the music in the kitchen and the low volume of the TV in the sitting room. Much as Sansa thrives off her family’s energy, it’s nice to have a reprieve from time to time. Jon is the perfect company for such times, despite his current state of discomfort.

“I swear, Robb did a number on my back,” he says now. He sets his mug on the table and collapses face-down onto the couch. “The fact that he looks like a beanpole might be the biggest deception of my life.”

Sansa is tempted to call him a drama queen, but she’s never been sure if Jon can tell the difference between flirting and an admonishment. She suspects not, considering she’s been doing the former for the better part of what feels like forever and he’s never made a move. Perhaps he’s just stupid. An unkind thought, she knows, and chastises herself for it. But if her friendship with the observant and outspoken Margaery Tyrell had taught her anything, it’s that men tend to be oblivious when it comes to matters of the heart.

“Straight men, anyway,” Margaery had once amended over drinks. “Forgive my heteronormativity, darling. All I know is that my brother and his boyfriend have seldom had such problems. Your issue with Jon Snow, on the other hand, is one well-known to every woman who’s ever had her sights set on a man. Not to mention, Jon seems a special case. The boy’s all chivalry. You could strip in front of him and he’d probably give you his jacket.”

Sansa had laughed, but there’s no doubt that Margaery’s right. And for all her prettiness and charm, Sansa had never been any great shakes at relationships. Her heart is as romantic as any fairytale, but it hadn’t served her well in practice thus far. Once she couldn’t ignore her crush on Jon any longer, she’d switched gears to Margaery’s preferred “womanly wiles.” But she might as well have been trying to seduce a brick wall for all the good it did.

“Do you want some ibuprofen?” Sansa tries. “Tylenol, Advil, anything?”

“Nah, I took some last night. Didn’t do me any good.”

Sansa presses her lips together, then pops them apart. “Shot of whiskey?”

Jon chuckles. “Tempting, but it’s not my idea of breakfast.”

“I suppose not.” Sansa drums her fingers against the countertop. She wonders if she should text Margaery for advice… Then again, she already knows what Margaery would say: _Offer to jump his bones_. It probably wouldn’t do his back any good, but that was always Margaery’s advice when it came to Sansa and Jon.

“Subtlety clearly doesn’t work on him,” Margaery had pointed out just the other night. “Sometimes you’ve just got to lay your cards on the table, and with any luck he’ll sweep them right off and bang you on it.”

The analogy didn’t quite hold up, in Sansa’s opinion, but she appreciated the effort. Still, Sansa isn’t any more adept at forwardness than she is at wiles. Her past relationships had relied on boys coming to her. She may have pined, but she never actively pursued. The problem with Jon is that he’s too unobservant to notice her pining, and too polite to pursue her on his own. If he even _wants_ to pursue her, Sansa reminds herself. Of course, she had noticed the way his gaze lingers, how often he finds an excuse to touch her, but then again maybe she’s making more of those instances than what they really are. Her romantic mind is fine for dreaming, but romanticizing the platonic is another matter entirely.

Sansa flexes her fingers on the counter—an act of agitation, but it gives her an idea. A stupid idea, if she’s honest with herself. A transparent idea. An idea more suitable to subpar porn than making Jon fall madly in love with her, probably, but it’s not like she’s come up with anything better. Apart from sucking it up and just being honest with him, but who _does_ that?

Ineffectual wiles it is.

“I could give you a massage,” she says, cool as you please, but it sounds stupid, anyway. “I mean, if you want. A backrub would probably help? If you’re going to say no to the whiskey, which, yeah, it’s not even eight A.M. so…”

She’s rambling. She knows it, and so does Jon; the only difference is that he’s thankful for it. Sansa’s too busy tripping over her own words to have noticed that he just gave himself whiplash from looking up at her so quickly. She wants to _massage_ him, for chrissakes, and she’s _nervous_ about it. A less-than-confident Sansa must mean she’s desperately in love with him, right? Jon thinks he may be reaching there, but then again…

Well, maybe he’s not.

“I smell,” Jon says, which doesn’t sound at all like the _yeah, that would be great_ that he meant to say before his brain decided to short-circuit instead.

“You smell?” Sansa echoes.

“I mean—” If the couch turned out to be a secret chasm to hell, Jon wishes it would open up and take him already. “Robb and I, we were out at the pub all night. People smoking and everything. I’ve probably got tequila shots oozing out my pores right now, so I just thought—”

“Oh, please. Jon, I don’t care.” Sansa waves his concerns aside and makes for the sitting room before she can stop herself. “I just got back from an hour-long run in the seventh circle of hell. I don’t smell any better than you do.”

And with that knee-weakening romantic segue, Sansa kicks off her shoes and straddles Jon’s back before either of them can say anything more about it. At least he was already laying on his stomach, she thinks to stave off the awkwardness. She had been so determined that she probably would have straddled him either way, and wouldn’t _that_ be an introduction to that subpar porn she’d thought of mere moments ago.

“Desperate Girl Just Fuckin’ Goes for It.” Has a nice ring to it.

Sansa splays her hands over Jon’s back and kneads the muscles there. The good news is, she’s not half-bad at massages; really, they’re second only to pancakes in her skillset. So even if this does go south, at least they won’t end up at the chiropractor’s.

_Don’t make sex sounds_ , Jon commands himself. Sansa’s bare hands are on his bare skin and her thighs are spread on his tailbone and her calves are nestled against him—ah, fuck, Sansa Stark is half-dressed on top of him. Maybe the couch really was some sort of chasm, but instead of being transported to hell he’s fallen into a universe where all his dreams come true.

Alternate universe or not, Jon reminds himself that he isn’t a lustful adolescent boy, he is an _adult_. He is a goddamn _working professional_ who will not succumb to his inner teenager, _for the love of GOD. Do not make sex sounds. For fuck’s sake, Snow, DO NOT—_

“Oh, Christ,” he moans into the couch cushions when Sansa’s fingers dig deliciously into his aches. “Fuck, Sansa, that feels good.”

_Right. Yeah. That’s exactly what I told you to do, you idiot._

“Hmm.” Sansa bites back a grin. God, does every guy have as well-muscled a back as Jon does? “Good thing your awful smell didn’t deter me, then.”

Jon chuckles and hopes she doesn’t notice how breathless he is. It really shouldn’t be this easy for her to turn him on—it’s damn near criminal. Jon isn’t sure if his inner teenager is just inherently stronger than he is, or if this is a stipulation of love that romantic comedies hadn’t prepared him for. Then again, he’d only seen so many romantic comedies because they were Sansa’s movie of choice, so what the hell does he know?

Best to lose himself in the feel of Sansa’s hands on him and not think about it too much. If he does, he’s sure he’ll lose his head completely, flip over, and ravish her right here on her parents’ couch. He’s honestly not sure which Stark would kill him first, but he’s positive that the rest of them would patiently wait their turn to desecrate his grave just to kill him again.

Lost in delusions as he is, Jon couldn’t say when, exactly, his hands start tracing the lines of Sansa’s ankles. He must have been doing it for awhile, he thinks when he finally does notice. And she hasn’t stopped him yet, so… Maybe he’s pushing his luck, but Sansa’s hands run over his shoulders and he moans again and he swears she’s milking this for all it’s worth…

Her fingers creep down his sides—decidedly _not_ on his back—and Jon’s hands sweep her calves. Just to test the waters, he tells himself. Also to feel up her legs. Long, toned, slender, smooth, bare, never-ending legs, legs that are straddling him even though Sansa’s hands have quit their ministrations and are instead fingering his stomach muscles—

“San?”

“Oh, uh—whoops.” Her hands are on his back again in half a second. “Slipped.”

Jon glances over his shoulder. “Sansa.”

Now she’s humming to the music playing in the kitchen and pretending she can’t hear him. Jon knows he shouldn’t complain—she’s still on top of him, after all—but…

_“Sansa.”_

She meets his eye. There’s a slight blush to her cheeks, but nothing else to suggest that she’d done something she wasn’t supposed to. That’s not to say that Jon minds being felt up by her, not in the _slightest_ , it’s just… What the fuck is going on?

“Sorry,” she says again, “did you want me to stop? You’re really tense.”

“Jesus, I wonder why.”

Sansa stalls her ministrations once more, this time to cross her arms. “No need to be rude, Jon.”

“That’s not what I meant. For fuck’s sake—” Jon isn’t sure why he’s suddenly so agitated, but something tells him it has everything to do with Sansa straddling him and touching him and making him all sorts of goddamn crazy because he doesn’t know what she wants or if she even wants anything, all he knows is that he wants her more than he wants coffee or ibuprofen or a shot of whiskey and he’s not sure if it’s right or wrong, it just _is_ —

“Oh my god, okay, I feel—god, so incredibly stupid—” Sansa mutters, more to herself than to Jon. She starts to climb off him, but that’s not what Jon’s after. Before he can think twice about it, he flips onto his back and yanks her by the arm in one smooth motion that has her mouth crashing down onto his.

Her small gasp of surprise is lost between their lips. Jon twists one hand into her ponytail and grips her waist with the other. He pushes off the couch so that he’s sitting up and she’s straddling him again, only now she’s in his lap and— _god_ —her legs are slung around his hips. He pushes her back, back, until she’s against the couch and he’s hovering over her, never once releasing her mouth. She tastes like sweat and Irish cream and faintly of mint—a sweet, elusive mint that he chases with his tongue.

To say that she was shocked would be an understatement, Sansa thinks. But her fingers tangle in Jon’s curls and she’s moaning into his mouth when he clutches her waist tighter, as though he needs her to steady himself. His other hand is braced on the armrest next to her head, because Jon thinks he might explode if he touches her too much, or he might suddenly wake up because surely this must be a dream, he’d never be so ballsy as to actually put his mouth on Sansa’s, he’d never be so lucky as to have her kiss him back—feverishly, ardently, like she’s wanted to do this just as long as he has—

“I fancy you,” Jon spills as he plucks kisses from her lips and peppers them over her jaw and down her neck. He’s already fucked five ways to next week, so he might as well go for it. “Have for ages. Thought Robb was going to kill me when he realized it, but I didn’t think—”

“I didn’t know,” Sansa says, her nails grazing his collarbone while he works at her earlobe. “Everyone seemed to know something, I just didn’t—I didn’t think you’d want me—”

Jon can’t help but laugh at that, a sound so low and rough in her ear that she swears she can feel it reverberate in her bones. “You’re a smart girl, San, but that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Sansa begins to protest, but her words turn to a groan when Jon sucks at the skin behind her ear and begins a series of long, languid kisses down her neck. His fingers trace the band of her sports bra, and she’d be self-conscious if Jon hadn’t always made her feel so comfortable, at ease, so at home…

“Wouldn’t want you?” he repeats now, with his mouth against her throat. “I feel like I’ve done nothing but want you since I was old enough to know what that meant. God, Sansa—” his hand tightens on the armrest when she arches against him— “have you seen yourself? Do you know yourself at all—how could I not want you?”   

“Are you always this romantic when you’ve got your tongue in a girl’s ear?” Sansa wants to know, breathless with laughter and want and pure, guiltless pleasure.

Jon chuckles again, and pulls back just far enough to look at her, all flushed skin and dilated pupils and that smile that could stop the sun. His hand leaves her abdomen to hook around the back of her knee and he says, “Girl with legs like yours deserves a little romance.”

Sansa laughs into the next kiss, and it’s only just fading away into a new spiral of that feeling she gets whenever she’s with Jon when—

The front door slams. Robb, Arya, Bran, and Rickon are shouting good-naturedly in the front hall, their footfalls echoing into the kitchen, and Jon’s still on top of her in perhaps the most compromising position either he or Sansa could imagine.

“Shit,” Jon says. Not wanting to die today, he’s off Sansa and on the couch in one motion—laying on his stomach, so as not to raise any eyebrows about what’s going on under his sleep shorts. He and Sansa are the only people who need to know about that, _ever_. Even when he asks her, as he plans to the next time he can get her alone, on an actual date completely apart from sinning in her parents’ home, no one ever needs to know that he was practically fucking Sansa in the living room.

“Still sore, Snow?” Robb calls when he and the others make their way into the kitchen. His eyes travel between the small space that separates his friend from his sister, the latter of whom is oh-so-innocently flipping channels on the TV. _Gross._ “Or has Sansa been playing nurse?”

“Sansa’s not a nurse,” Rickon says.

“Oh, to be young again,” Bran remarks dryly.

Sansa, meanwhile, lifts her chin and keeps her eyes on the television. “I have no idea what any of you are talking about.”

“Sure you don’t,” Robb says while Jon snorts into the couch cushions.

When the others are too distracted to pay mind to the two of them exchanging moon-eyes in the sitting room, Jon catches Sansa’s gaze, tries to wink and fails, but she gets the point.

“Fancy another jog this afternoon?” he asks, voice low so as not to be overheard. Those Stark kids are nosy, after all, even if it seems that they’re not listening in.

Sansa crinkles her nose at him. “What about your back?”

“Huh.” Jon stretches, nudging her thigh with his toes. “I’d almost forgotten. It’s barely a twinge.”

“Hm. I suppose Nurse Sansa didn’t do such a bad job on you?” she says, barely suppressing a grin. It didn’t feel necessary to try.

Jon’s answering smile is crooked. “Not bad at all.”

“Well then…” Sansa hums, thinking she’ll have to give Margaery a call later tonight. Or tomorrow, perhaps, if Jon plans on staying over again. Or, you know, whenever she gets a spare moment. Months of plotting her carefully crafted wiles certainly couldn’t be exchanged for just one rendezvous on the couch, after all. “In that case, I’m ready to hit the running path when you are.”


End file.
